This book is the first work that comprehensively presents the accounts of Lia Eden, a former flower arranger who claims to have received divine messages from the Archangel Gabriel and founded the divine Eden Kingdom in her house in Jakarta. This book places Lia Eden’s prophetic trajectory in the context of diverse Indonesian spiritual and religious traditions, by which hundreds of others also claimed to have been commanded by God to lead people and to establish religious groups. This book offers a fresh approach towards the rich Indonesian religious and spiritual traditions with particular attention to the accounts of the emergence of indigenous prophets who founded some popular religions. It presents the history of prophetic tradition which remains alive in Indonesian society from the colonial to reform period. It also explores the ways in which these prophets rebelled against two hegemonies: colonial power in the past and Islamic orthodoxy in the present. The discussion of this book focuses on Lia Eden including her biography, claims to prophethood and divinity, the development of her group Eden Kingdom, her challenge to Islamic orthodoxy under the banner of the MUI (Indonesian Ulama Council), her persecution by radical groups, her experiences in court trials and imprisonment, and public responses to her emergence. The discussion also covers other themes currently drawing public attention in Indonesia, such as pluralism, religious freedom, tolerance, discrimination against minorities, and secularisation.

This book is an extensive critical study of the mystical poetry of Nund Rishi (1378-1440), the founder of the Kashmiri Sufi order called the Rishi Order, who is revered and remembered by most Kashmiris as 'Alamdār-e Kashmir or the flag-bearer of Kashmir. The author breaks with dominant perceptions of Nund Rishi as a quietistic Sufi and argues that the themes of Islam, Death, the Nothing and the Apocalyptic in his poetry are a form of negative theology. Nund Rishi's negative theology is presented as a discourse on the transcendent which relies on negations rather than affirmations that disclose an existential politics. It explores Nund Rishi's mystical poetry not only within its historical context but also in relation to religious and political controversies in medieval Kashmir. The book locates the negative theology of Nund Rishi as one form, among others, of the 'negative path' across regions in the medieval Indo-Persian world.

The essays in this volume discuss recent trends and issues in the scholarly study of the Qur’ān and its exegesis. The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented development in qur'anic studies in terms of both the number of volumes that have been produced and the wide range of issues covered. It is not an exaggeration to say that the field of qur'anic studies today has become the 'crown' of Islamic studies. In this book, scholars of diverse approaches critically engage with the Qur’ān and its exegesis, including questions about the milieu in which the Qur’ān emerged, the Qur’ān's relation to the biblical tradition, its chronology, textual integrity, and its literary features. In addition, this volume addresses recent scholarship on tafsīr (qur'anic exegesis), including thematic interpretation, diacronic and syncronic readings of the Qur’ān. Various approaches to understanding the Muslim scripture with or without tafsīr are also discussed.

Against the Nation invites readers to explore South Asia as a place and as an idea with a sense of reflection and nuance rather than submitting to conventional understanding of the region merely in geopolitical terms. The authors take the readers across a vast terrain of prospects like visual culture, music, film, knowledge systems and classrooms, myth and history as well as forms of politics that offer possibilities for reading South Asia as a collective enterprise that has historical precedents as well as untapped ideological potential for the future.

This volume, first published in 1988, analyses the process of stabilisation amongst the Arab states, a process that has contradicted all predictions of impending disintegration and impending collapse. Although there were some cases of disintegration, there are evidently mechanisms at work that helped consolidate the majority of Arab states and the Arab state system. Revolutions, as in Iran or the Sudan, or political collapse and disintegration, as in Lebanon, have been highly visible but nevertheless exceptions. This collection, Volume Three in the Nation, State and Integration in the Arab World research project carried out by the Istituto Affari Internazionali, focuses on the problem of explaining the stability and persistence of the state in the Arab world.

This book provides a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of exorcism and an analysis of the reasons for its contemporary re-emergence and impact on various communities. It argues that exorcism has become a religious commodity with the potential to strengthen a religion’s attraction to adherents, whilst also ensuring its hold. It shows that due to intense competition between religious groups in our multi-faith societies, religious groups are now competing for authority over the supernatural by ‘branding’ their particular type of exorcism ritual in order to validate the strength of their own belief system. Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity features a detailed case-study of a Catholic exorcist in the south of Europe who dealt with more than 1,000 cases during a decade of work.

Church History reveals that Christianity has its roots in Palestine during the first century and was spread throughout the Mediterranean countries by the Apostles. However, despite sharing the same ancestry, Muslims and Christians have been living in a challenging symbiotic co-existence for more than fourteen centuries in many parts of South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East. This book analyses contemporary Christian-Muslim relations in the traditional lands of Orthodoxy and Islam. In particular, it examines the development of Eastern Orthodox ecclesiological thinking on Muslim-Christian relations and religious minorities in the context of modern Greece and Turkey. Greece, where the prevailing religion is Eastern Orthodoxy, accommodates an official recognised Muslim minority based in Western Thrace as well as other Muslim populations located at major Greek urban centres and the islands of the Aegean Sea. On the other hand, Turkey, where the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is based, is a Muslim country which accommodates within its borders an official recognised Greek Orthodox Minority. The book then suggests ways in which to overcome the difficulties that Muslim and Christian communities are still facing with the Turkish and Greek States. Finally, it proposes that the positive aspects of the coexistence between Muslims and Christians in Western Thrace and Istanbul might constitute an original model that should be adopted in other EU and Middle East countries, where challenges and obstacles between Muslim and Christian communities still persist. This book offers a distinct and useful contribution to the ever popular subject of Christian-Muslim relations, especially in South-East Europe and the Middle East. It will be a key resource for students and scholars of Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia provides fresh insights into how cause lawyers navigate political and institutional change, by presenting and analysing the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), the oldest and most influential legal and human rights organisation in Indonesia. Based on rich ethnographic research, this book charts the developments of the organisation since its founding in 1970, its contribution to the ending of the authoritarian, military-backed New Order (1966-1998), its relative decline in the years following Indonesia’s democratisation and its revival in recent years as Indonesian democracy and human rights come under threat. The author examines the tactics the organisation has used, including show trials and working alongside grassroots communities, organising them and educating them about their rights. It highlights how this organisation flourished more under an authoritarian regime than under democracy and how its present, prominent, adversarial-political version of cause lawyering is playing a leading role in civil society resisting further erosion of democracy and human rights. The book addresses recent democratic erosion under President Joko Widodo, and documents pivotal moments in Indonesia’s contemporary history, such as the ‘Reform Corrupted’ mass demonstrations in 2019, illuminating how democracy shrinks, and how lawyers push back. The first book on Indonesia’s crucially important cause lawyering, activist lawyers’ group, this book will be of interest to researchers in Asian Law, Indonesian Studies. It is also an essential point of reference for future research in public lawyering in Asia.

Poetry has long dominated the cultural landscape of modern Iraq, simultaneously representing the literary pinnacle of high culture and giving voice to the popular discourses of mass culture. As the favored genre of culture expression for religious clerics, nationalist politicians, leftist dissidents, and avant-garde intellectuals, poetry critically shaped the social, political, and cultural debates that consumed the Iraqi public sphere in the twentieth century. The popularity of poetry in modern Iraq, however, made it a dangerous practice that carried serious political consequences and grave risks to dissident poets. The Dangers of Poetry is the first book to narrate the social history of poetry in the modern Middle East. Moving beyond the analysis of poems as literary and intellectual texts, Kevin M. Jones shows how poems functioned as social acts that critically shaped the cultural politics of revolutionary Iraq. He narrates the history of three generations of Iraqi poets who navigated the fraught relationship between culture and politics in pursuit of their own ambitions and agendas. Through this historical analysis of thousands of poems published in newspapers, recited in popular demonstrations, and disseminated in secret whispers, this book reveals the overlooked contribution of these poets to the spirit of rebellion in modern Iraq.

This study illustrates the strong relationship between world views and ethical values that are embedded in the lives ofa group of people called wong pinter. Some notes on the results of the study show the following points. First, on the basis of the categories of worldviews studied (classification, causality, space, time, and self-others relation), it is found that the concept of classification is not strong enough. The concept of space is also not sufficiently patterned, in contrast to the findings of the concept of space on the Ainu people, the people of Bali and Yogyakarta. Wong pinter describes the concept of space in relation to the existence of non-human beings. The concept oftime is explained in more detail. Some of the views about time are intended to discipline and self-control. On the self-other concept, God becomes the most important element in His status as the Almighty. The selfis a common creature that interacts with other humans and non-human beings. Horizontally, the worldview of wong pinter pivots on the ethical elements of the relationship between God's creatures that synergize and create harmony so as to create a comfortable and peaceful life. Secondly, the basic concept of the worldview guides the wong pinter on the pattern of life both in society, self-control, keeping not to hurt others, and care about the hassles of others. Therefore, they are regarded as people who behave nobly and become role models in society. Thirdly, even though the wong pinterhas some abilities that are relatively similar to the abilities of the shamans (comrnon dukun) that have been mentioned by most researchers but the behavior of wong pinter is different from and even contradict the general characteristics of the dukun. Fourth, this study enriches the study of the concept of space, time, causality, and self-other relationships. This study also explicitly revise the theories that generalize the understanding and characteristics of dukun or wong pinter which has been widely associated with witchcraft, money, and worldly pragmatic goals.